With non-Apple equipment, you’ll often just need to find your router’s IP address, shown in System Preferences> Network> Advanced> TCP/IP when you’re on Wi-Fi: But if a reboot doesn’t work and you’ve gotta switch yours manually to the recommended one shown, you’ll need to do some sleuthing on the best way to do that for your device. It’ll probably grab a better channel if one’s available, and you can go on your merry way. Luckily, our home network (in bold) is on 5GHz, so we don’t have a ton of competition in our area yet-but I feel sorry for my sad neighbors who are on channel 11 on the 2.4GHz band.Īs I noted, if you see that your router is on a channel that’s crowded, just unplugging it and plugging it back in will usually do the trick. Scroll to the right to find the “Channel” column, and click its header to sort by it. Then you can look at the list of the networks near you to see what’s what. First of all, the column on the left will give you suggestions for the best channel to use, whether your router is providing a network on the 2.4GHz band or the 5GHz one. Once the app opens, click on the Window menu and select “Scan.” (You don’t have to do anything with the “Introduction” dialog box that’ll appear.)Ĭlick “Scan Now” on the new window you’ll get, and there’ll be so much information about the networks around you that you just won’t know what to do, my friends. So to get started, first hold down the Option key, and then click on the Wi-Fi icon in your menu bar.Īs I’ve done above, choose “Open Wireless Diagnostics” from the menu. But if you need to investigate further, I’m going to walk you through finding out how many of your neighbors are on the same channel as you are and some suggestions for what to do if your router doesn’t seem to want to adjust its settings with a reboot. By default, most devices choose the best channel for the current conditions, so you’ll be set. If you think that’s what’s going on with your network, then, all you may have to do is unplug your wireless router and plug it back in. Think of it like radio-if you drive through an area with a ton of competing stations, you won’t be able to hear any of them clearly, right? It’s the same with Wi-Fi. The thing to find out, though, is whether you and your neighbors happen to be using the same wireless channel.

Or maybe you live in a densely populated area, and your neighbors’ networks are fighting with your own. Maybe your service provider is in the middle of an outage. Maybe your router has hardware problems or is misconfigured. If your home Wi-Fi has slowed to a crawl, there are all kinds of possible reasons why.

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